


Reverence Must Rise

by ninhursag



Series: Crucibles [2]
Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Crusades, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Dubious Consent, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Past Sexual Abuse, Purple Prose, Religious Guilt, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Romance, Self-Harm, Slavery, Suicidal Thoughts, Templars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-18
Updated: 2020-05-18
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:34:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24243631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninhursag/pseuds/ninhursag
Summary: A historical Malex au set during the crusades.A jaded mercenary with too much to be jaded about meets a Knight Templar with a death wish and a terrible, crushing shame. He endeavors to save him and is himself saved.The Michael POV to Here I Am Fallen.
Relationships: Michael Guerin/Alex Manes
Series: Crucibles [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1749865
Comments: 36
Kudos: 94





	Reverence Must Rise

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to aewriting and daughterofelros for looking this over and helping me poke at it.
> 
> Mind the tags. The warnings are there, and inform the background of the characters. Bad things happened in the past.

Michael bought his freedom with blood in the winter, when the rains watered the land and turned the crops green. The campaign season had been brutal, and his Amir had sworn before Allah that he would free all his slave soldiers by the end of it if only there was victory.

His Amir smiled at him after and clapped him on his shoulder. "Will you stay on with us, Guerin?" he asked. "You're a good man."

And Michael forced a smile for the man that had held his leash, looser over the years, but still. "Goodness is golden, my Lord," he said. "The more golden the better."

And the man laughed and shook his head. "Going mercenary, then?"

Michael's smile was real then. "You've honored me, my lord, and fortune has smiled. Let's see what else she might bring me."

Everything, if he could get it. 

The main thing, as far as Michael Guerin was concerned, was that Acre was damnably filthy even when the breeze came through, at least the part where he was stuck. The people, their rotten, affected Latin, the badly cooked food and not quite turned meat they offered the soldiery. Only their gold and their free flowing wine was worth his time. They offered more than Saladin and his men across the way, and gold, after all, was the lifeblood of the world. A few more campaigns like this one and he’d have the capital to do something else, something new.

A merchant caravan down the silk road, maybe? He’d seen books from the East written in a strange and graceful script and no one he knew had been able to translate them. It would be something to learn.

In the meantime, he had wine, battle, a few willing girls to sit on his knee and make laugh and then some, and the knowledge that the campaign season would come to a close soon.

Also, there was Brother Manes, who, under the filth of battle and the armor and surplice of the Templars, was the prettiest damn thing Michael had seen in an age. There were worse places to be, all told. It was not so bad, sitting back in his hammock imagining getting his hands on a little bit of that. 

It could not be a real expectation. Manes was relentless in battle, focused on tactics and driving through the lines but when not in the fields, he was at prayer, or so it seemed. And the Franks in general were affected about fucking between men in a way he didn’t want to involve himself with. Better to stick with girls while he was out among them rather than risk them getting their church involved in it. 

Manes noticed him looking, at least sometimes. His expression was sour and dry and his words bit deep. “Drunk again, Master Guerin,” he would say, with an annoyed curl of his mouth.

But then he wasn't always sour.

“You don’t need to wave around a sword like it’s your cock,” he muttered one time, while Michael was on the training ground which made Michael grin and give him a sidelong smile. 

“Want to give me some pointers on how to wave it to suit you, Sir Manes?” he asked, smirking. “I’d accept sword or cock, at your pleasure.

Even Manes’ dark eyebrows were irritated. “It’s Brother Manes.”

Michael lowered his practice blade and gave Manes a long look over, for once letting the interest show. “Oh, right, your cock is only for god. Well I wouldn’t want to take from the Lord. Hope he enjoys you!”

The surprised blush he got in response though, now that was beautiful. He'd expected some brittle comment about blasphemy, but instead there was a tipped up half smile, softer than anything he'd seen from the man. An almost laugh. "He's not really known for getting off his throne in the heavens and that can leave mere mortals wanting."

Both of Michael's brows rose and he found he was smiling, really. "I, for one, would never leave you wanting, Alexander Manes.”

And there was something like shy and young about that smile he got in return. Manes said, "save it for the dancing girls, Guerin. They are actually interested," but there was no bite to it and he gave a sidelong glance backwards when he left the field.

Michael whistled softly to himself. Maybe not so impossible after all.

And he could be kind, shockingly so. Michael was soft on the beggar children, always had been, to the eyerolls of most of his company. But when he was looking over a busted ankle of a ragged, quiet boy, it was Manes who came out and settled in next to him and told the child a distracting story about how his own ankle was broken when he was ten. How it had healed sound after all, against expectations.

Brother Manes, but with a gentle, soothing voice and careful hands working with Michael's to set and bind the injury.

The brush of their fingers when they met was warm and surprisingly easy. Manes' eyes were focused, careful and kind, in a way that was different. Just different.

He looked more after that. It didn't go unnoticed either, and not just by the mostly frowning Manes.

“You aim too high, Guerin,” Valenti the Spaniard said, and laughed at him. “That’s all fine, blue, noble blood and bound over to god. And a man, at that. Stick with the dancing girls.”

But the dancing girls only grinned and sat on his knee. They didn't watch him with careful eyes. They didn't make him burn in his dreams, like the tease in Manes' dark eyes and strong hands.

He wondered if anyone had ever put their hands on that skin before or if he was truly pure. Perhaps. And in what world was someone like him, who hadn't ever been pure, going to be fortune favored enough to be the first.

And then he learned more, inadvertently, wandering past the closed off lady chapel too late at night.

The sound of a lash biting into flesh was never something he liked to hear unprepared. It pulled at his mind, sending it to dark places, helpless and cold and small. He could push the old memories into a box if he had the moment to ready his mind, but he didn’t expect it, now, here. In this cold dark chapel with the icons of the saints looking on. 

He watched Alex Manes attack himself without flinching, drawing blood from his own back with a knotted cord. The only sound he heard was the impact of the lash on flesh, tearing skin, and the whispers of prayer in between. There were no whimpers or moans at the impact. 

Just gasps and hisses of in-drawn breath.

He wondered if it hurt less if you did it to yourself, if you had that control over it. The marks the lash left on skin looked the same.

He couldn't stay any longer, so he left, not stopping to check if he'd been seen.

The battlefield was chaos and blood, screams and adrenaline. It was the moment when Michael's thoughts and worries and ideas stopped and he was action. He was made for war, the eye of the storm. Death in his hands, the perfect weight of his short and long swords moving together. Death dance.

That's how he saw Alex Manes, beautiful, the graceful arc of sword, the battered armor, sigil and shield. He was bare headed, which was wrong, that was the first thing that Michael realized was wrong.

Dark hair, blood flecked, the deadweight stare of his eyes. Michael moved before he fully understood what he was seeing. He was there, shield in hand, to block the blow that Alex didn't. Counterattack.

Alex's eyes-- those dead eyes-- they blinked. Stared. They widened. As if, under everything, he wasn't dead at all.

"Guerin," he mouthed. Uncomprehending. 

Michael shook his head, seeing an ending so starkly in those dark eyes, the bright pain of the lash, the faint fumblings of something else, deep and lost. But ending didn't always mean dying.

"Manes," he said, but the words were swallowed by the chaos around them, the battle fog. This time, though, the chaos and blood had a focus. Keep the man before him alive. 

He couldn't remember much of the rest, of how they steered through flesh and metal and wood, bone and body.

It was done by the time the sun was low and they were off the field, Alex Manes in filthy armor, his surplice stained in gore and mud, dark eyes blank and mouth lovely. In the bushes, in the dying light. In the open air.

Michael slipped close to him, close enough to taste the sweat of his skin, but it was Alex who kissed him. Hard leather of gauntlet covered hands, rough fingers tangled up in his hair. Gasping mouth, slick and open, muttering something that sounded like a prayer, an oath.

"I can't, I can't, I cannot," Alex hissed while he did, while he stripped belt and sword and gauntlets from Michael. Trousers around their ankles like boys, hiding in the shadows and no time to bare themselves.

"You can," Michael told him, fingers digging into the bruised skin of those hips, seeing only blood.

And he saw… he saw… that if he could save this boy, this man, he could just…

"No one has ever," Alex whispered, into his mouth, into him, against him. "I'm damned, we're damned, what circle of hell…"

And Michael could only shake his head and hold him hard. Arms in a tight circle around shoulders still clad in mail and dirt.

He saw him in the great hall in the castle at Acre. Alone, eyes still reflecting the shock of it.

Alex Manes, who was so clearly pure and untouched and yet believed himself rotten, diseased to the core. It was a laughable madness, but laughing didn’t change beliefs.

Michael could look away. He could turn his back, go his way, and hope that someone better, worthy, would help Alex.

"Two weeks," Michael said, instead. "Give me two weeks? Is that too long?”

You aim too high, the voice in his head told him, but Alex looked at him and did not refuse him. As if a boy from less than nowhere could put his hands on a Lord's son, a religious, and have him after all.

In Aleppo, when campaigning was done, he went home to wash, sleep, and then took advice from someone who knew more than he did. 

“How do you take care of someone who is new to pleasure?” he asked Isobel, sitting across from her at her table, drinking the tea she poured out, gracefully. His sister looked tall and proud, unveiled and clean faced for her family. He was a guest in her harem, a beloved brother, which still felt strange. 

She sighed. “Everyone is different, Michael? Why not do it like your first time? Was that nice?”

His face twisted into something blank. “No.” In a back closet, on his hands and knees, with the prize of the encounter to be put before the sword master and given a chance to show he could fight. It had hurt. He’d gone into the practice ring bleeding and won anyway so it had all been worth the cost. But that wasn’t something for someone like Alex.

She made a gentler sound. “Well. You did it again, afterwards. So it couldn’t have been all bad?”

He shrugged. “I suppose. Maybe there’s a book about it? What did Noah do for you?” That made her splutter and glare. But he said, “Please, Isobel. I don't want to fail.”

She sighed and settled down next to him. "Well, how about a hot bath to settle the nerves? A massage? Everyone likes that?"

Michael frowned for a moment, considering, and then grinned. "That's true," he said. "Everyone does like that. I'd have made an excellent bath maiden. What else?"

"I don't know, brother. Read your books to him and talk to him about the stars? All the maidens love that."

Michael snorted. "He's a soldier of God, even if he is a virgin. Was a virgin. I don't think I can woo him like a maiden."

Isobel shrugged airily. "Everyone likes stars, Michael. Why ask me if you don't want my advice?"

"Fair enough," he muttered.

"Anyway, maybe he should woo you a little too, if he's so wonderful, this soldier of God of yours," Isobel said, with that same lightness but an intensity he didn't recognize behind it. 

He just rolled his eyes and laughed at the suggestion. "Why would he do that? I'm already won over."

She sighed. "Of course you are."

Alex came at the promised time, wearing plain soldiers' garb stained with travel and an utterly exhausted expression that Michael had seen on men walking to the gallows.

But there was trust in the way he put himself into Michael's hands, even if it was born of desperation. 

He slept in Michael's bed, trusting, or beyond caring, but there all the same. When his eyes closed in sleep, Michael whispered into his hair, "you prostrate yourself before icons. If there were any justice, the icons would bow down to you."

And Alex, who wasn't sleeping after all, opened those dark, candlelit eyes of his to narrow points and muttered, "is that really worth blaspheming over?" 

And Michael smiled at his expression and said, "I think the cause is worthy."

"You would," Alex scoffed. "Maybe I'm the one that's not worthy."

Then Michael laughed at him outright, though without malice. "The icons bow to you, not me." 

It was Alex who changed the rules, midgame, when he leaned down against Michael, close and hot, heavy scent of pleasure and water, and said, "I want to know who you are. Could you tell me?"

And Michael thought for a moment, about putting him off. Giving a half truth to make him smile…

Giving less than all to Alex, who was starkly honest and wholly himself. Instead he found himself offering up the truth of it, what he could say.

"I told you. I was whelped by a slave girl. Before they figured out I was good for war, they didn't entirely know what to do with me. I was always trouble." He forced a smile, waited for a question he didn't know if Alex knew enough to ask.

Alex's expression was confusion. It meant nothing to him, then. The implication. "You- but--"

Michael rolled off him easily then, but keeping near so they were eye to eye if no longer touching flesh. "Yeah. Whoever knew I'd be in a position to get my hands on a Knight Templar in any way but on my back in a brothel?"

There it was, dawning realization in Alex's dark eyes, pink mouth in an o of surprise… "Did. Did that?" 

"Nah. I told you, I was made for war. I got to keep my balls and earn a sword and freedom. And then this house and, my. Well, now-- you." He reached out and put his hands on Alex's bare skin, lightly, waiting for him to draw back. "And you see, that's what I call lucky. Favored of God even."

And he waited, waited for something to change, something to be weighed and found wanting on the careful edge of Alex's dark eyes. A slave child, spared from infamy only by luck and a good sword hand. 

Alex who looked at him, not really understanding, but still the same as he had been before they'd exchanged any words on waking, wondering and cautious. A little enraptured by the brightness in Michael's body, the warmth to be found there. Alex who looked at him, directly with a confused shake of his head and said, "I just want you willingly. Honorably."

As if it were nothing, to say that, to someone who had been born without any particular honor. As if it weren't a gift, as if everything about this wasn't.

So Michael did the only reasonable thing and sucked his cock like the market whore he'd never entirely been. And Alex, like an innocent, marveled at him for it and curled his fingers in Michael's hair with a tender reverence that was unfathomable.

It felt good, this hard won skill, learned by necessity, perfected by choice and will. But never, never had any one gasped under the touch of his mouth, unraveled skien by skien, and then knelt down beside him after to kiss the mouth that had sucked him off.

After, Michael fed him oranges and made him laugh with a story about outwitting a Lord who had hired him and then tried to renege his pay.

"Does it bother you?" Alex asked. "Going from master to master, never keeping one? Never knowing loyalty."

And Michael held the words in his heart and belly, the, oh, you could be my master, and simply said, "I tired of being mastered young, unless it's by gold." And then, he tilted his head and smiled, "or love."

"Is that possible?" Alex said, suddenly serious. "Love? Isn't that for women and God?"

Michael shrugged and licked his lips, as if the taste of Alex's cock was still heavy on them and said, "perhaps. I think it is for you. Possible."

Alex's mouth was soft, but grave. "You were the one who said you couldn't flog love from a human soul, Guerin," he said.

Michael shook his head, smiling again, reflecting back what he had been given, "you're too serious, Alex," he said, and reached for a kiss. He was not denied it.

Alex said his prayers still, on his knees, even dressed in Michael's fine linen shirt, body bare beneath and flushed with passion.

His dark head bowed to the God his body was given to, despite everything. Michael watched him, from his bed, eyes slitted closed against the morning sun coming in through the bed curtains.

His hair shone in the sun, his beautiful mouth moving around Latin words so easily, eyes half shut. Michael let the softness of it slide over him, faith warm without the violence of the lash. “Grant me the gift of Divine Grace to protect and conquer my five senses," Alex whispered, as if there was someone to hear him.

And Michael thought of conquest and what it meant to be the conquered and was silent, listening only.

"Are you a saracen?" Alex asked him after, rising from his knees and coming back to the bed. "You don't pray."

Michael shrugged from under the covers. "I've converted to every faith at least once, if that's what you mean. I find God in the downswing of a good blade."

Alex started at him, as if trying to see the jest in his eyes. "Are you a heathen?" he asked, as if he wasn't sure if he was genuinely horrified by the thought Michael might be or amazed. 

Michael shook his head, "but, if the true God wants me, he should come and find me," he said. And then Alex, instead of being horrified anew, smiled at him, sideways and lovely.

"Maybe he has," he said, slowly, as if considering something. "You saved me. Perhaps, I can… I can do something for you."

"I only gave you pleasure, you saved yourself." Michael's brows went up, "and, sweetheart, your cock might belong to God, but I don't think it will be the instrument of my conversion."

Alex smiled at him again, honey slow, whole and still altogether lovely and altogether different from anything in Michael's broad world. "Try it and see."

Michael hadn't been fucked by a man with nothing on the line in years and he could feel the burn of it, despite the oil and care that Alex brought to his task. But here he was, in the daylight, bed curtains drawn, with a man between his legs.

The burn was beautiful, the heavy weight and drive of Alex's strong, scarred body. Flesh and divinity.

“How long has it been?” Alex said and groaned then, like he knew, like he understood, like he thrust deeper than anyone had ever been and left fire behind. “Since anyone…”

“Idiot,” Michael hissed. “I chose you. You’re the only one who matters.” And grabbed Alex by the hips and pulled.

Fire from heaven, like the old heathen gods used to bring to bear, between Michael's thighs, until all he felt was wonder.

"Come with me," Michael whispered to him on the last morning. "Don't go back, come with me."

"Where are you going?" Alex asked, wide eyed and brilliant.

"Across the world, wherever you want to go. You can save me for your God if you want."

And Alex laughed at him. "You've gone and taken what's his, it's the least I can do to bring him you."

But it wasn't until he watched Alex, his Knight, his religious, bareheaded and fair like a youth from a ballad, in his sister's house that he felt finally settled in his skin.

He'd gone to the cellar for wine and come back instead of the steward. They didn't hear them come and he stayed a moment, listening.

"I will never be forgiven and I know it," he heard Isobel say, cool as ice. "I had two brothers, you see, and they made me choose which one would come with me and which would stay in the slave pens. And I chose Max."

"I think Michael has forgiven you," Alex said as if somehow there was something to forgive in the torture of a child. His voice was soft but just as cool as Isobel's. He looked away from her, his face still, like an old marble statue mostly stripped of it's paint.

"Of course." She laughed, and it was thick with pain that Michael never knew how to bear the weight of. "Only, only please, redeem my error and choose him. Forsake all others. Make him happy."

Alex nodded, "lady," he said. "God wills it."

His eyes looked alive and serious, like a Knight from a story. Michael believed him. Goodness was golden, golden skinned and burnished by dark hair and eyes like a fugitive dark moon.

**Author's Note:**

> Your comments and kudos give me life.
> 
> Come yell at me @ninswhimsy on Tumblr.


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